To begin with, slow down a bit X). I think it isn’t healthy to produce four games a year, not only does it lead to irrealistic expectations, but it also push the teammates to exhaust themselves. We can hardly beat 2014 record in terms of productivity anyway and I don’t want anyone to drown in a coffe’s cup (would be a fitting death but no).

We’re going to stay with basis : our top priority is to finish Milk Episode 4 first. If the work with sprites and chibis is almost done and I’m hoping we’ll be able to finish the CGs real soon (why did I write action scenes again?), I’m worried about the backgrounds. Indeed artists who can handle BGs aren’t legion and we’re missing the colouring phase. Would be galling to get stuck now so I’m hoping luck will smile at us once again ! Episode 4 should be ready in 2015, what remains unknown is when. Will it be at the beginning or at the end of the year…

Aluwo as a bisho (still by Melow)

That being said, I still want to make another short project in the following months. In fact, a specific idea haunts me (writing a story with lots of choices…moral choices) and I really want to make it. So I’m wondering about dragging the whole team with me to enter next Ludum Dare. Needless to say that if we enter a game jam in April, we won’t be doing Nanoreno in March. To be continued…

Some of you may be wondering if we gonna take part in next Japan Expo convention. Well, the answer will depend on you! Since we’re a team of hobbyists, we don’t have a big budget and we’re paying transports/accomodation cost out of our own pocket. We’re enthusiasts and we want to be sure we’re going to make you happy. So I gonna circulate a survey to know if some people are interested in last time hard copies (if we need to reprint some) and if some people are interested in new goodies. Depending on what answers we got (as well as the numbers of answers we got), we’ll be able to see more clearly into it. Of course, most international people won’t be able to attend a French convention, but please do let a comment (here or through social networks) if you’re interested in mail-order. I can’t garantee anything for now but we might be able to open an online store in the future.

Beyond Japan Expo, I think it’s reasonable to make progress with Milk Episode 5. I really hope this part will be available before the end of the year because it’s urgent to finish the common route once and for all. Or else we’ll still be making the rest 10 years from now and that doesn’t sound that tempting to me =(.

Miruku (by Clua *_*)

2015 will be more relaxed…maybe?

To conclude, 2015 should be less hectic than 2014…should be. Because, as I said, we’re not immune to surprises ~ You know me, I can’t stop myself.

Let’s bring 2014 to a close with a little report of everything that happened this year (like what we did last January).

To begin with, we released Episode 2 from Milk ~La légende des étoilesduring mid-March. It was a bit hasty to my taste since we were late in relation to my estimations, and we had to rush through the release to tackle the next task. Which is a shame and I really don’t want the same mistake to recur.

The good news is that with Episode 2, Milk was officially heading towards Khzi’s part that I loved to write and that contrasts a lot with what I wrote for Episode 1. The cows and Tarô aren’t the main characters anymore and just accompany the long story narrated by our nutty alien. I think Khzi has everything to be popular and the various feedbacks I got confirm that impression. Freyja seems to have fans too, I find that amusing XD.

The key element with this release is essentially our transition to the current team (who gained experience during the journey). We still have a big gap between the art assets but we’ll solve the issue in due course. The current style should stay at least for a while even if we’re not immune to something unexpected.
March was also the month of Nanoreno, and I went from Milk to How visual novel changed my life, released in April, without transition. The artists’s work was precisely limited to avoid burnout so the gain was mostly based on text and programmation. Which turned out to be a nightmare… Overwhelmed, I had to infringe upon my on-the-job training schedule in order to finish the script (and integrate the translation, while I’m at it). The whole thing with an even moreunpredictable Keul. I copped it, which may explain why the game was a bit delayed. And I thought it would only be a little gift to please our fans. That’ll teach me to do too many things at the same time =’D.

Since HVNCML was just a small thing without pretention, I didn’t expect much. So, many month later, I’m really surprised to see people discovering us like that, I sure hope they won’t take fright because of what I wrote XD.

Two visual novel in a year is quite decent, except that we never stop. Never. The big project of the year was of course the team going to the Japan Expo convention. I won’t hide hide, it’s tottaly because of the Endless Seasons guys, they have a catching enthusiasm and were looking for people to share their booth with anyway :p. In the end, Projet Saya offered to supervise and we managed to convince Atelier Dreamnoid to join us in this crazy ride. The preparation was huge, no organiser wanted to leave things to chance, so we ask every participant for thei opinion many times in oder to be in the same wavelength. The Träumendes Mädchen team had to finish many things, with the weight of the crowdfunding campaing on our shoulders, like Episode 3 and some goodies. The remakes got added really fast with the success of the first strechgoal. Thanks to our artists, including Orties and Melow who produces most of the drawings between the two of them, everything turned up alright.

In the end, it was an enriching experience. For a first time in the convention world, I think the team did a good enough job and it was a pleasure to meet everyone IRL and spend time with fellow developpers.

Once again, it should have been enough but we had to give ourselves more work =’D. The summer end was a good opportunity to put webdesign under construction. The old devblog wasn’t suitable anymore, we wanted a real “shop front” and not a messy page. If posisble, the site had to be both in English and French for pratical reasons. The result still isn’t perfect but we’re working on it!

Icing on the cake, we tried a new game jam : the Ludum Dare. With an even more challenging goal than Nanoreno and a different community, we were assured we need a lot of coffee and wouldn’t get much sleep. Many difficulties made the experience a bit painful on my side (I must be a masochist XD), the team did finish a game in time. Of course, it couldn’t be a big complex one (don’t forget it was done in a weekend) but Garden of Oblivion, published betwee August and September, was the perfect opportunity to male a real game from scratch. We did rely on what we knew well (visual novel) and the result has the same vibed but we learned a lot.

To conclude,the planning I had in mind for 2014 was loaded and the team used a lot of energy to make it possible. It’s an achievement I’m very proud of and I shouldn’t try to do as much this year if I don’t want my lovely teammates to die of weariness…

I’ll make another post early January to reveal what we’re gonna do in 2015 (a year as surprising as the last one, I hope), so meanwhile I wish you a merry Christmas. Also, here’s a cute Christmas Miruku by Melow ;).